


It's All Right

by plumeria47



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Family Drama, Gen, Strained Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29277285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumeria47/pseuds/plumeria47
Summary: Aberforth Dumbledore spent his childhood tending to his little sister, and his adulthood tending the resentment he carried against his older brother.  What will it take for him to let go?
Relationships: Aberforth Dumbledore & Albus Dumbledore & Ariana Dumbledore, Aberforth Dumbledore & Ariana Dumbledore
Comments: 6
Kudos: 3
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	It's All Right

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/gifts).



> The "Major character death" warning is in reference to the obvious ones, given the family involved here. Nobody else dies. :).
> 
> EssayOfThoughts, I hope this is sort of what you were hoping for?

_A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.  
\- Mary Karr_

From an early age, Aberforth showed a penchant for calming high spirited and temperamental things. His parents lived down the road from two different farms, and when the family would go for walks, young Aberforth would beg to be allowed to wander up to the fence to pet any animal that was close enough to reach, whether that be the lively ponies, the grumpy-looking bulls, the curious goats or the free-roaming geese. Percival would caution and Kendra would worry, and big brother Albus would tell him to stop being foolish (little Arianna, sitting on Percival’s shoulders, would wail that she wanted to go, too, to no avail), but Aberforth assured them it was fine ... and it was. No horse ever kicked near him, no goose snapped, nothing ever bit him.

At home, Kendra would ruffle Aberforth’s hair and call him her “magical little farmer.” She and Percival presented him with two of his own Nubian goats when he turned seven, and he happily threw himself into caring for them, his young hands rapidly gaining strength as he learned to milk them, his natural instincts helping to coax the headstrong animals into doing precisely as he wished. While Albus studied his newly-acquired Hogwarts books in preparation for his first year, Arianna helped Aberforth feed the goats and brush them down. She didn’t have quite his same affinity with animals, but she was gentle and sweet, and laughed when a goat tried to nibble the sleeve of her robes. “It’s all right,” she protested, when Aberforth tried to coax the goat away from her. “I’m fine.”

After Arianna was attacked, though ... well, in some ways nothing changed. She might have no longer been the easygoing and chatty little girl she had once been, but she was still gentle and sweet most of the time, and loved to help feed his goats. They would play Kneazle’s Cradle with a bit of string, or he would help her practice her letters on his slate. Occasionally Arianna would help their mother make biscuits, and then, if she was in one of her more conversational moods, she’d ask Aberforth to join a tea party with her rag doll and the stuffed goat she’d had Kendra make on his behalf. Sometimes it all seemed almost ... normal. 

And yet everything changed. They’d moved homes, from the fine manor they’d used to occupy to a modest cottage in a country village. Their father was in Azkaban, and Arianna’s existence demanded sometimes slight, and sometimes painful accommodations. Gone were the days of ninepin bowling in the corridor outside the nursery, or building things out of wooden blocks. Loud noises could set Arianna off, and so toys that crashed were left behind when they moved to Godric’s Hollow. The trauma of her attack and the magical suppression made her withdraw into herself sometimes, times when she’d stare into space, lost in fighting her own wars. It didn’t matter whether Albus was home from Hogwarts or not – he was kind to her, but he always seemed too busy to tend to his strange, occasionally dangerous sister. But Aberforth would sit her quietly on a stool near him as he tended the goats, and he’d coax her to eat when she wouldn’t respond to Kendra. 

Harder to deal with were the explosions, when Arianna’s tightly bottled power would escape its prison, resulting in uncontrollable magic in unimaginable places. Small things that Aberforth would accidentally do when he was small – a pail of goat’s milk tipping itself over ... and then righting itself, for instance – became enormous things with Arianna. Candles suddenly flared so high, the ceiling caught fire. Doors slammed, knives hurtled through the kitchen, the family cat would be hovering six feet in the air, on and on it went, and anyone in the same room with Arianna would get shoved against the nearest wall by the force of the magical explosions. Afterwards, she would weep, or, worse, huddle in a corner, silently rocking herself while Kendra restored items to their original states and Aberforth placed the terrified cat in Arianna’s arms in an attempt to calm them both down. “It’s all right,” he’d murmur. “We’re all fine.”

In general, Aberforth had never had much use for words, whether in interacting with his peers or in tempering stressed creatures. Goats didn’t need many, nor did Arianna. They just needed quiet attention, and perhaps a few phrases here and there, but that was all. And yet the silence in the house after 1899 oppressed him. His mother and sister were gone, and the only other living person was his elder brother. Normally so talkative about his magical discoveries and his grand plans, Albus now wandered the house like a ghost, speaking only to remind Aberforth to sit up straight at dinner or to remind him to pack his trunk for Hogwarts. Despite the daily satisfaction of looking at Albus’s now-crooked nose, Aberforth could not find it in him to forgive his brother for taking away the happy tranquility. The portrait of Arianna which now hung in the parlor was quiet as the real girl had been, rarely speaking to him, but she would listen to Aberforth’s silences in a way that Albus had never understood.

The years went by. Albus, now the Transfiguration professor at Hogwarts, came back to visit Aberforth at Godric’s Hollow one evening, casually mentioning over dinner that there was a pub for sale in Hogsmeade, and might Aberforth be interested? When Aberforth grunted non-committally, Albus raised his gaze from his plate, piercing blue eyes meeting their match, and said it would mean a lot to him to have Aberforth nearby. 

Aberforth resisted at first, but Arianna nodded quietly at him when he asked her about it later that night, adding, “It’s all right,” in her thin voice. “You’ll be fine.” And so he sold the cottage and moved to the flat above the pub. The entire place was rather dank and seedy, but Aberforth loved it. The patrons it attracted were those who had no use for the Three Broomsticks. They came to drink in solitude, or to converse on things they didn’t want overheard. Whether they had unsavory hearts to go with their frequently unsavory appearances, Aberforth neither new nor cared. He occasionally drew on all his years of calming tempers and high spirits on those occasions when his pub-goers got into a brawl, but it was thankfully not often necessary. And although he knew Albus’s frame well enough to recognize when he came in under guise, whether to keep an eye on his younger brother or collect information for Merlin-knew-what, Aberforth also cared not. Arianna would sometimes seem to be observing her eldest brother from her place on the wall, but when Aberforth asked what she thought about Albus’s visits, she would just shake her head and smile her soft little smile. “It’s all right,” she’d say, if she felt like talking. Or sometimes just, “He’s fine.”

Aberforth wasn’t so sure about Albus being “fine,” however. After the well-publicized duel between Albus and Grindelwald, all Aberforth could think was, _What took him so long?_. If he’d had his brother’s skills, he would have gone after the bastard as soon as he started attacking people. The man had shown his true colours right in front of Albus, using _cruciatus_ on Aberforth. And yet it took his brother years to finally put a stop to his evils. _Years._. What had Albus been playing at?

And why the hell was he suddenly using a new wand? Aberforth supposed he could have just _asked_ but found he didn’t care enough to bother. He never understood his brother’s reasons for doing anything anyway.

As the years continued to roll by, when Voldemort rose, then fell, when a famous boy who would probably have done better to be left alone came under Albus’s eye, Aberforth tried not to pay too much attention. Things would get better or they wouldn’t, there was no point in risking one’s neck. And the more he stayed out of his brother’s grand plans, his fancy Orders and whatnot, the better. When Harry Potter came into his pub – of all places - with a pile of friends, creating their own secret society, which they named after their headmaster, Aberforth wanted to tell them Albus wasn’t really worth that much admiration and honour. Arianna would tell him later “It’s all right;” he wondered if, nearly 100 years after her death, she’d forgotten how to say anything else. 

When Albus died a few short years later, Aberforth attended his funeral, wondering why he did not feel more at peace, knowing his brother could no longer devise complicated schemes. He told himself it was just the human thing to do, to keep an eye on some of the kids Albus had taught, the ones who were trying to do things on their own. It had nothing to do with his brother, that he was keeping an eye on Harry Potter through a mirror he’d bought from one of his regular patrons, or that he was feeding a group of adolescent rebels who were hiding out in the castle. 

He was completely unsurprised to learn the following spring that his brother had managed to continue to scheme after his death after all. Aberforth told himself it was for Harry, not for Albus and his ridiculous plans, that he finally decided to do more than talk back to Death Eaters. It wasn’t going to be like calming high-spirited goats or even magic-tortured sisters, that was for sure, but ... he had to try.

When the battle of Hogwarts ended, Aberforth, surprised to find himself still alive and mostly unhurt, turned down Professor McGonagall’s offer of a hot meal and a bed and limped back to his pub in the early morning sunshine. Pushing open the door, he grabbed the first dusty bottle he saw (if there was ever a day to drink before breakfast...) and thumped down in a chair. Arianna’s portrait hung slightly crooked, probably from the force of the magical blasts hitting the nearby castle, but everything thankfully appeared otherwise unharmed.

His sister smiled her gentle smile. “It’s all right,” she said, looking at him. He could only imagine how battered and exhausted he looked. 

“Mostly,” Aberforth corrected, taking a swig from his bottle. He thought about the events of the long, long night. So, Albus really _had_ known how to finish Voldemort, if Harry Potter was to be believed. He thought of his brother then, the highs and lows, the secrets and lies, the arrogance and ... apparently, the guilt. He thought of what Harry had told him the previous night. _He never was free. Never._ For the first time in years, Aberforth found himself wishing he could talk to Albus. To hear him admit that guilt with his own lips? Maybe. But he found he no longer needed it. Maybe it was time for him to finally let go. “Actually, yeah,” he amended at last, leaning back and putting his feet up on a battered table. “We’re going to be fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> The author will also be fine ... if you leave a comment! I love hearing from my readers. Concrit is fine, too - just be polite. :)


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